CTM x SET Festival

Contemporary Electronic Music in Iran

↑Ata "Sote" Ebtekar.

CTM 2017 will team up with the Tehran-based SET Festival for experimental art to present works at the forefront of the Iranian capital’s electronic music scene.

In a new commission titled “Sacred Horror In Design,” Ata Ebtekar aka Sote will collaborate with performers Arash Bolouri (santoor) and Behrouz Pashaei (setar) on a project merging electronics with traditional Persian acoustic instruments for a "Persian techno apocalypse." The visuals will be contributed by virtuoso Thom Yorke and Monolake collaborator Tarik Barri. “Sacred Horror In Design" challenges familiar tropes of tonality and rhythm and rebuilds the unknown via polyrhythmic, polytempic and polymetric patterns. The project takes on the paradoxical task of preserving the beauty of tradition while bending and morphing existing patterns into unique shapes that may eventually become another form of folklore in the future. It melts and twists the proportions of reality both visually and aurally, resulting in a two-pronged movement united in its divergence. Nano particles build micro structures, which in turn construct macro networks in a mega system for a magical, textural multi-timbral environment.

Guitarist and producer Siavash Amini constructs rich sonic environments lined with microbeats and "soul-healing" electric guitar riffs. The experimental electronic duo 9T Antiope layers acoustic instruments, vocals and electronics. Both of these young projects will help to represent a scene that flourishes through Iranian citizens’ ingenuity and resourcefulness in making the most of the piecemeal reform occurring over the past several years alongside internet-based research and grassroots artistic exertions.

This programme is enabled through cooperation with the Goethe-Institut and the German Federal Foreign Office and was planned as an element within the framework of the exhibition "Die Teheran Sammlung" at Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie. The exhibition, which was scheduled to open December 2016 and finally had to be canceled due to unresolved negotiations, had been designed to present a glimpse into the hitherto mostly unseen collection of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. It was meant to combine one of the most extensive selections of 20th-century Western art outside of Europe and the USA with examples of innovative Iranian art, especially from the 1960s and 70s. The collection was first assembled for the opening of the TMoCA in 1977 under the second Shah of the Pahlavi Dynasty. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the works have been effectively closed off from the rest of the world.

Kindly supported by Goethe Institut and the German Federal Foreign Ministry.